Other Lives: Passionate about her day job

By Michael Lohmeier

Thursday

Jul 12, 2018 at 6:52 AMJul 12, 2018 at 6:52 AM

If you ask Katelyn Seager what she’s passionate about, she’ll immediately answer, “Social work, for sure. I was a junior in high school when I decided that was the direction I wanted to go. I was driving with my high school boyfriend and I said, ‘I think I know what I want to do for the rest of my life.’” After revealing her desire to be a social worker to him, “He said, ‘One: what is that? And what do you do with that?’ It’s not something you go into for the money. It’s something you go into because you care about helping people.”

How did social work appear on her personal radar?

"I wish I had one specific thing that lead me to it,” she said. “I do have an aunt who’s a social worker. I have family members who have gone through some tough stuff. It was something that felt right.”

Her mother, Anne, has worked as a bedside nurse in a Vermont hospital for more than 30 years and currently works with nurses and doctors in conjunction with hospital computer systems. “It’s made us closer. I’m not a nurse and she’s not a social worker, but she totally gets it.” She says her father Danny has also “given me a lot of motivation.”

She remembers, “I wasn’t a straight-A student” in high school. Once she discovered her love of social work, her grade point average was 4.0. “Not once did I question whether I was in the right field. Social work is very broad, that’s what I really loved. There are many different avenues I could’ve taken. I don’t know how I chose medical social work.” After witnessing her mother’s day-to-day as a nurse, “I knew that was not for me. I knew that I wanted to be in a hospital, so when I was an undergrad, I shadowed a medical social worker. I remember thinking, ‘This is cool, I like this.’ You’re constantly learning.”

“I didn’t really learn what medical social work was until after I graduated with my medical degree,” she said. “I took a year off between undergrad and graduate [school], moved to Washington state, worked in a retail store. I knew I was going to graduate school at that time. I got into the University of New England.” She said she could have had a fine career as a social worker using her undergraduate degree. Why didn’t she? “My parents. They were a huge influence. They said, ‘You really need to continue with school.’ They knew, as I did, that medical social work requires you to have your master’s [Degree]. I needed to follow those steps if I wanted to pursue medical social work.” She graduated with a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of New England.

Two years ago, she began working at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital and more recently at the Seacoast Cancer Center. How does she feel about it now that she’s worked at the hospital? “I’m still trying to figure it out. There is something that keeps me going. I started as a ‘per diem’ at the hospital, meaning I was only covering when somebody needs a day off. I was working more than 40 hours a week, which I loved. I’d go back after 40 hours and be like, ‘Oh, sign me up for that overtime!’ It felt so natural to me, it’s one area of my life that ... I wouldn’t say I have control ... but comes naturally. It’s been hard transitioning from a per diem to a 32-hour position. As a per diem, I loved the variety and not knowing what the day is going to bring. There’s different worlds in the hospital. There’s the in-patient world, the E.D. (Emergency Room), the cancer center ... it’s just so different every day. Whether it’s handing someone a piece of paper that has a resource on it, like a website, or helping them get insurance, something they can actually ‘see.’ Helping them follow through with it makes me feel good.”

She said she sees social workers like herself as a non-judgemental, objective person who can safely ask tough questions that a family member or friend may not be able to, like, “Why the heck did you act like that? Maybe you were in the wrong. [I try to] show that different side. I think we do a lot of that, even though it’s so brief and so quick, we do a lot of ‘Let’s take a look at what you’re doing. Why don’t you have health insurance? Why haven’t you seen a primary care doctor in 30 years? Why are you doing what you’re doing? Let’s try to work on that and see what we can do to change it.'”

The Cancer Center is her most challenging environment. She now works two days a week there. “It’s a whole different world.” She struggles not to “take things home” with her. “I’ve seen some [bad] stuff. I really wish I could explain exactly how I compartmentalize it. I do it at work, I don’t even think about it. Then, I’m in the car. I love that I work 25 minutes away, because that drive does help.” By the time she arrives home, “I’m like, ‘Hey, what’s going on tonight?’” However, laying in bed at night, the experiences from her day in the Cancer Center can be a difficult loop to stop from playing in her mind. “It’s 25-year-olds getting diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer.” She adds, “We’re not invincible. Not that I thought that I was, but it’s that thought of, ‘That’s never going to happen to me. That’s never going to happen to any of my family or friends. It puts into perspective that things happen and they suck.” She says she’s still working through some of it, but she is still glad to return each day. “It’s a challenge, the challenge of making me give a little more of myself, but I like it. For me, it’s hard to deal with the thoughts or feelings you may have been having, and it’s easier to deal with other people’s problems. Who wants to work on their own problems? (Laughs)”

She describes a colleague who has spent the past 20 years working in the Cancer Center. “She is someone I 100 percent look up to. I’m very lucky I get to learn from her. She guides me through those tough cases. So many times I’m like, ‘Oh my god, help, help!’ I’m constantly bouncing things off of her. If I didn’t have somebody who knows, I’d be drowning a little.” What goes around comes around. “I unexpectedly had to train a new per diem the other day. I absolutely loved doing that.” She realized that she’s learned a lot over the past two years and her trainee “was learning from me. I left work feeling really good.” She thinks a moment and adds, “She didn’t cry or anything.”

Part of her job is to help families find the answers to devastating questions. “'Do I take mom off life support? Is that what she would want?’ That’s why Advance Directives are a huge thing that we do.” These documents answer such questions before they’re asked in a hospital. She aids families and patients in these situations as best she can. In one case, she said, “I don’t even know what I really did, but I was there for them.” Several weeks later she saw them at the hospital for a routine visit. “I had to go back and say ‘hi.’ They thanked her for her assistance. “I sat with them for a while. I’m pretty sure I shed a tear after I left them. There haven’t been many times I’ve cried after the hospital.” With a warm smile she adds, “And that was a positive one.”

Michael Lohmeier lives in Portsmouth writes a bi-weekly feature on the second lives many people lead outside of their main professions. Know someone who would make for an interesting profile? Drop a line to edge@seacoastonline.com and share a bit about their story and their contact information. See more Other Lives profiles online.

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